Creole Carnival: Music Travels With Us and Within Us GlobalFest’s SchoolTime Performance of Creole Carnival Tuesday, April 5, 2016, 11am Zellerbach Hall, University of California, Berkeley The Cal Performances Creole Carnival Engagement Guide was written by Sabrina Klein, Armando Castellano, Melanie DeMore and Marilyn Stanley. It was edited and designed by Sabrina Klein and Rica Anderson. © Copyright 2016 Cal Performances Table of Contents How to Use This Engagement Guide............................................................................................................ 3 Your Starring Role in the Theater (theater etiquette for students) ........................................................... 4 About the Performance & Artists ................................................................................................................ 5 Artistic Concept: Music Travels With Us and Within Us ............................................................................. 7 About Carnival ............................................................................................................................................. 8 Engagement Activities (pre-performance) .................................................................................................. 9 Resources .................................................................................................................................................... 14 Acknowledgements .................................................................................................................................... 15 2 How to use this Engagement Guide If you have photos or lesson plans to share, please let us know! Use #CreoleCarnival@Cal. We invite you to challenge yourself and your students to think with the curiosity and passion of the arts. This engagement guide is organized around 4 key artistic practices (as identified by the National Coalition for Core Arts Standards at http://nccas.wikispaces.com/) Investigating: Questioning, exploring and challenging. Imagining: Opening the door to what’s possible, and even to what seems impossible. Creating: Making artistic choices with a work of art in mind. Connecting: Reflecting on both process and product and making connections to other aspects of life and study. You’ll be able to link on specific subjects that you or your students may want more information about. The body of the Engagement Guide invites exploration before and after the performance, giving each student tools to make personal and meaningful connections during the show. We’ve included a pre-performance engagement activity and a post-performance activity for artistic practice and reflection. By no means should you feel limited by these suggestions! Go, make art, learn more…and share your experiences where you can. Artistic Literacy: Having the skills and knowledge you need to connect meaningfully with works of art— that’s what we mean by artistic literacy. We think that means something different than knowing the names of all the different instruments musicians might play, or being able to reproduce the exact melodies you might hear during a show. To us at Cal Performances, it means you and your students will have a significant glimpse into the artistic process and will have a chance to try to solve the problems the artists aim to solve creatively. It means that the next time you see a performance, you’ll be able to use these same insights to connect with a work of art through the artist’s process and that this will deepen your experience as an audience member. The artistically literate student audiences comes to understand that every artist draws from a core set of concepts skillfully chosen and applied in performance to create a work of art both unique to the artist, and connected to other works of art. And along the way, we hope that students of all ages—and their teachers and adult mentors—will be inspired to experiment with artistic decision-making and creativity themselves. Enjoy the show! 3 Your STARRING Role in the Theater As an audience member, you are a STAR, too! You play an important role in the performance community. The artists need YOU in order to give you their best work. S.T.A.R. Audiences S = Support the artists by being attentive and focusing on the performers. T = Tune in: watch and listen for understanding (and for Creole Carnival, listen for the similarities and differences between each group’s music.) A = Appreciate the performers by clapping at the right time. For example, when a scene or dance ends, or when the stage lights fade to dark. R = Respect the performers and other audience members. At a performance, you, the others in the audience and the artists are sharing this experience together and are part of a performance community. Think about ways you can best support the community’s performance experience. We know you will be a STAR today and will help your classmates shine too! 4 3. About the Performance globalFEST’s Creole Carnival honors the roots of African musical currents, crossed with a fusion of sounds from the Americas, and revolving around Carnival, the pre-Lent festival celebrated globally that’s everyone’s favorite excuse for a party. From Brazil (Casuarina) — the superpower of celebration — to Haiti (Emeline Michel) and Jamaica (Brushy One String), each country has its own rich traditions for music, dancing, costumes, and cutting loose. Spanning 35 cities ranging from Lisner Auditorium to Massey Hall in Canada, globalFEST’s international trio of artists, will explore, expand, and upend notions of Carnival, without losing sight of where magic and religious fervor intersect with a madcap, no-holds-barred soiree. Founded in 2003, globalFEST spotlights artists who represent diverse global styles, artists who are bringing down boundaries between countries and creating cultural opportunities for collaboration. About the Artists Emeline Michel The reigning queen of Haitian song, Michel combines traditional Haitian rhythms and acoustic jazz with social, political, and inspirational messages, in spirited songs that capture the reverence and gratitude for each moment. Her warm voice, captivating live performances, and moving compositions have made her one of the leading ladies of a unique wave of Haitian musicians who emerged in the 1980s and emphasized complex themes, conscious lyrics, and a broad palette of musical styles, including Haitian compas, twoubadou, and rara. Born in the northern city of Gonaïves, she first sang gospel as a young woman, before leaving home for Detroit and then France and Canada, where she mastered jazz and pop forms. As a performer, she has graced some of the Caribbean, Europe, and North and South America’s most respected stages. In English, French, and Haitian Kreyol, her ten albums have catapulted her to international acclaim. The New York Times has compared her to “an island goddess,” and Haitian Times proclaims her an “all- time favorite artist.” Michel now resides in New York City. 5 Brushy One String One night, rural Jamaican musician Brushy (born Andrew Chin) dreamed of the guitar under his bed. He knew, suddenly, that if he picked it up and dedicated himself to playing it, he’d get to see the world. The instrument in question—a battered but resonant acoustic guitar—had only one string. That didn’t stop Brushy, the son of a musical family with a hardscrabble past, and his dream has come true. He has a seemingly innate ability to inspire even casual listeners— including millions of people who have watched and shared Brushy’s videos on YouTube (his Chicken in the Corn video has almost eight million views). The veteran musician evokes the sweetness of soul singers like Percy Sledge, Al Green, Toots Hibbert of Toots & the Maytals and the grit and wit of Delta bluesmen, all woven together with a Jamaican pulse and ingenuity that shows that the island’s music is about far more than reggae. Heartfelt blues combine with dancehall-style vocals, and uplifting, catchy ballads channel a soulful intensity and profound faith. Casuarina Samba is more of a musical family than a specific genre, rich in different accents, both familiar and unfamiliar to American audiences, including the bossa nova, samba from Bahia, and the Afro-Brazilian rhythms of the Nordeste. The music of Casuarina incorporates all of them, while flirting with pop and urban music. Born a dozen years ago in Lapa, a hip yet gritty bohemian Rio neighborhood, the five-piece member group is part of a samba renaissance that has spread like wildfire in recent years. In addition to their own compositions, Casuarina creates original and sophisticated arrangements of classics, often drawing on the work and spirit of chorinho and of MPB, Brazil’s wildly creative popular music. This, too, runs in the family: Vocalist João Cavalcanti is the son of an equally innovative musician, Lenine. 6 5. Artistic Concept: Music Travels With Us and Within Us The performance “Creole Carnival” presents artists from three different countries: Brazil, Haiti and Jamaica. Creole refers to the mixed heritages created in the Americas in these countries and here in the US, following the colonial period where European, African and Indigenous peoples mingled. Carnival refers to the parades and celebrations that have deep roots in both Christian and older beliefs. While each of the singers has a unique sound quality, all the rhythms, lyrics, instruments and colors on the stage are pulled from a mixed heritage that has emerged since colonization. All the music